


Strangeness and Charm

by tomaka



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other, Weeping Angel is lonely, pure silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 12:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14164566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomaka/pseuds/tomaka
Summary: Being a Weeping Angel is great and all, but when you're one of the most feared creatures in the universe no one ever wants to talk to you.  What's an ancient feared lonely being to do?





	Strangeness and Charm

Being a Weeping Angel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. First of all, it’s boring as hell. You spend most days frozen solid and left only with your thoughts, if you even still have any coherent thoughts after millions of years of tedious life. There’s been more than a few of us that have gone a little mental and pitched themselves into the nearest star, all in hopes they can escape the monotony of existence. They say we can’t die, but I’ve never seen any of those suicidal ones come back so I’d say that little theory’s been proven wrong.

There are days I envy those bold-hearted Angels that have the gall to take the death plunge. Can’t say I’ve got the courage. I’m bored out of my stone skull, but I don’t want to die. Not yet, anyway.

Second thing that sucks about being an Angel? No one wants to talk to you, no one who’s not an Angel, anyway. Anyone who looks at me and knows what I am immediately starts moving in the opposite direction, and anyone who doesn’t know what I am just keeps walking by. I don’t know which one is worse.

At least if they run they’re acknowledging you exist; they pay attention to you, even if it’s only to get away. When they walk by you and don’t even so much as glance in your direction, part of you can’t help but feel a little hurt.

Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way. The other Angels don’t seem to mind, they like the way things are. They like hunting prey and taunting people. I can’t see the appeal anymore. Maybe I feel bad for the poor creatures we feed on, they have these bright colourful lives that last for just a flash, and then it’s over. And we show up and muck it up.

Not that we should starve to death. An Angel’s got to eat, after all. But I don’t see why we have to make a game of it; I just give them a little tap and off they go to some year long past. They never see me coming and I’m alright with that. I find all that extra fear makes them taste a little sour, and I don’t care for it.

Some of my brethren are pretty sadistic, if I do say so. I’ve got one brother—nasty piece of work, him—who only hunts infants. Says the potential energy from a baby is so rich and sweet you don’t need to feed again for ages. I can’t help but feel it’s unnecessarily cruel, seeing as a baby can’t survive on it’s own in the past. At least have the decency to send one of its parents back too.

Another sibling, one of my smirking sisters, likes to feed on whole families. Picks off the kids first, usually on the way home from school or while they play in the backyard or at the park. Makes the parents freak out for a few days, then zips them off to be with the kiddies. She likes the salty taste of their dread, and always saves it until last. But at least they’re all headed back as a family. Too bad my sister sends them back somewhere in the middle of the Black Plague. Plus my sister is always bloated and slow afterwards from all the feeding. She’s insufferable for ages.

I like the older folks. Ones that only have a decade or so left. They’re not as tasty, and they don’t last long between feedings, but my conscience likes them a lot better. Send a 75-year old man back to 1889 and he’ll probably be alright. And if he’s not? Well, if he hasn’t had a decent life by now things weren’t about to get any better. So off you pop, grandpa. Thanks for the snack. They’re a little bland on the tongue, but I’ll take a little blandness if it makes me feel a little less guilty.

You’re probably thinking, “Wait, a Weeping Angel with a conscience?”. Yeah, I get that a lot. We’re not all evil psychopaths, no matter what everyone seems to say. What’s the human expression? Black sheep. I’m the black sheep in this weird little family.

Speaking of family, I haven’t spoken to mine in a while. They’re off hatching some plan to take over the world or something, and I just can’t be bothered. Last time a few of us tried that they got stuck staring at each other, frozen in some sick square dance. I’ll admit I don’t really feel all that bad for them, and I can’t say I miss them. 

I broke off from the group a few months ago, gave them some excuse about finding a new hunting ground. I left London, hopped on a ship, and now I’m in some place called Canada. A lot less people than London, which has it’s ups and downs. I get to move around a lot more, but feeding is a bit trickier when you’re in the middle of the woods and the nearest person is 50 miles away. 

At least our kind isn’t limited to just human food. I found a few four-legged things eating grass that gave me a decent boost. I don’t feel so bad about feeding on animals either. It’s probably easier for them to survive in the past when they can’t tell the difference between 2016 and 1889.

I wandered around for a while, just exploring. Canada’s big, it turns out. Really big. It takes a lot longer to get from place to place, even if I fly—yes, those big wings on my back actually do something.

It’s been a great adventure though. I found a new favourite pastime, and it’s kind of perfectly ideal for an Angel like me. 

I go to the movies now.

They’re easy enough to sneak into; wait until a human leaves through a back exit and zip in when their back is turned. Easy peasy when you’re a super fast alien.

Theatres are great because they’re dark. I just have to hide out in the far back corner, duck out of sight a little, and no one knows I’m there. People wander in and out but no one ever sits in the awful nosebleeds, and when the lights go out I can pop up and watch the show. 

I’ve seen more movies than I can bother to count, and it’s the best time I’ve had in millennia. I might try a proper theatre next, take in a few plays. I’ve heard those are good too.

People in Canada pay attention to me a lot more now. London had so many statues most people ignored them, but Canada’s only got a few. If someone sees an angel statue in a park or in an alley, they stop to admire. Even if I’m stone, I kind of like the attention. 

There was that one guy who spray painted me, and that was annoying, but it only took one blink for me to make him soil his pants. The scream he made as he ran away was worth the scrubbing to get the paint off.

I met a nice lady, too. Actually, ‘met’ is too strong a word. I don’t get to ‘meet’ anyone, which sucks. But she interacts with me, and it’s pretty okay.

I was in the park one early morning, making my way across town to a cinema showing the newest sci-fi thriller. She was doing that weird human thing were they run around in parks first thing in the morning. I see a bunch of them doing it and I don’t see the appeal. They get all sweaty and panty and it looks like it hurts sometimes.

Anyway, she happened upon me near a park bench. I’d just come out of a wooded area and managed to make a statue-like pose before she saw me, so there I was, serene pretty Angel beside the bench.

She stopped to tie a shoelace when she saw me, and I must have been awfully interesting because she stood and stared at me, drinking from a water bottle. She walked across the path—and I could have bolted then, but I didn’t—and picked a bunch of wild flowers. They were white with long stems.

She spent a few minutes weaving them all together until she’d made a circle of them. Then she put it on my head. And it was so bizarre I didn’t know what to think. No one had ever done something like that before. 

So there I was, standing with a stupid smiling Angel face—I’ve perfected the ‘harmless statue’ look—and a bunch of flowers on my head. Then the lady left. Just ran off down the path and left me alone.

I watched her go as soon as she turned her back, and when she was out of sight I pulled the flowers off my head and looked at them. White flowers with yellow centres, with their green stems coiled around one another in that circle shape. 

She’d made me a crown of flowers, and it was the nicest thing a human had ever done for me. It was the only thing a human had ever done for me. 

Damned if I didn’t put that silly flower crown back on my head. I’m glad I haven’t found any other Angels in Canada, because if they’d seen this I’d be the butt of jokes for the next few million years.

I felt…pretty. I felt appreciated. 

I stayed in that spot—the movie could wait—hoping the flower lady would come back, but she didn’t.

Not right away, anyway. The joy of being an Angel and being a few hundred million years old is that I’m probably the most patient creature in the universe. 

A kid tried to climb me around midday, reaching for the flowers. He managed to snatch them off my head, bruising them in the process, and I put my anger into the scariest Angel face possible when he wasn’t looking. I had my talons going for his throat when he turned back to me, and he made the most enjoyable choking noise as he dropped the flowers and ran. I caught the crown, tried to fluff up the crushed flowers, and put it back on my head with a smile.

A few more people stopped and admired me, which felt nice. Some took pictures, and that was interesting because another neat thing about being an Angel is that I can extend my consciousness into images of myself, essentially making an Angel copy. I got to see some different locales around the city that way, and someone even printed me off and stuck me to their refrigerator at home. If I’d been any other Angel I’d have probably taken the opportunity to munch on the potential energy of those photo-happy humans, but I liked the attention too much to mind.

The lady came by again the next morning, still doing that weird running thing. The flowers had wilted, and I wished I could have done something to prevent it. The lady didn’t seem to mind. She plucked the limp flowers off my head and flung them into the bushes, and I felt my stone soul die a little. It got better though, when she made me a new crown, this time with fresh green twigs adorned with soft puffs of fuzz.

It wasn’t as flashy as the white flowers, but I can’t say that I cared. I had a big smile on my face when she left.

I stayed in the park. Most mornings the nice crown-making lady would come by and make me a new crown for the day. People paid attention to me with that little circle on my head, and I liked it. There was one person who took a picture of me and published it on the internet, and I was a little overwhelmed when my consciousness suddenly got tugged in about a million different directions. I may have also used the opportunity, when I appeared on the screen of an elderly woman’s iPad, to have a quick meal. I didn’t want to leave the park, even just to feed. I hope that wherever she was, it was nice in 1889. Sorry, grandma. 

This went on for a while, this strange relationship with the nice lady. It became a regular thing, even if she didn’t come every morning—humans have these things called weekends, apparently. She ran out of new things to make crowns out of, so eventually she started repeating or mixing materials and I was okay with that. 

People would comment on the crowns as they passed, and I learned their names. There were daisies, pussy willows, dandelions, long grass, ferns, even leaves. I can’t say I had a favourite, though I did like the bold yellow of the dandelions. 

People would try to take the crowns sometimes, but I always got them back. Not difficult when you’re an Angel and you were born to scare people half to death. Sometimes the rain or wind would knock the crowns off, but I saved them. If the weather was particularly bad I’d take the crown off and use a wing to keep it safe, and no one ever noticed if I changed positions a little.

Things got interested one morning when the nice lady was busy weaving the crown and a man approached her. He was young, I could tell by the potential energy that wafted off him. It reminded me that I probably needed to feed soon. 

Actually, the feeding issue solved itself after a few minutes when the man turned aggressive, and then violent. I don’t know what he wanted, but he made the nice lady run away while he chased after.

I’d seen human violence happen before, and I was more than happy to stay out of it. I had a conscience when it came to Angels dealing with humans, but humans dealing with humans were a different matter.

But this was the nice woman who’d been making me crowns for weeks. She’d brought a bit of happiness to my long dull life and I wasn’t ready to give that up. Without so much as a second thought, I chased after the offending man once I was out of sight.

When I’d caught up the woman was on the ground and putting up a great fight. I had to admire that bit of spirit. But I didn’t admire for long, because while they were busy no one so much as glanced in my direction and I closed the distance. 

Oh. _Oh._ It was the best meal I’d had in centuries.

My conscience didn’t pipe up when I wrapped a taloned hand around the back of the man’s neck and consumed his future. There was just a silent fwip and he was gone, off to see what life was like in 1889 Canada. I did not wish him well.

The man’s energy invigorated me from my wingtips to my toes and it felt wonderful. I could taste not just his life, but the lives of his unborn children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was sweet and savoury and beyond filling and I did not feel guilty about any of it. Anyone who wished to hurt my kind crown lady did not deserve offspring. 

Speaking of my kind human, she was recovering from the sudden disappearance of her attacker when she spotted me. It was not my best moment. I was still in full-out Angel attack mode when I was frozen in place by her sight, and I knew what my mouthful of fangs did to people.

She screamed and scrambled up and ran, I guess I couldn’t have blamed her. Inwardly, I sighed. I wondered if I should go after her, but centuries spent on Earth and millions of years living in multiple galaxies had told me that nothing good ever happened to the creature chased by a Weeping Angel. At least, not from their perspective.

Resigned, I turned and went back to my park bench, and I wondered if there was any point of staying. I stared at my little spot, then stood and held my peaceful Angel pose and waited.

I waited and waited. People wandered by as the days moved on. I got less attention now that there was no crown on my head, and I knew I should have just carried on. I could have gone to see that sci-fi movie at the cinema ages ago, but I stayed in that park, rooted in my spot. 

Weeping Angels, we’re not much for hope. We don’t really ‘hope’ for things. We feed and live and feed some more but we don’t hope for things. If there’s something we want, we take it. It’s what we, as a species, do. We’re unbeatable…most of the time.

But I couldn’t help but sit there and hope for my crown lady to return. There was little I could do if she didn’t want to come back. I didn’t know where she lived, I didn’t even know her name. It never occurred to me that maybe that information would be helpful to me.

I did see her again though. It was the middle of the day, when the days were shorter and the weather was cooler. She walked up to me and eyed me warily. I had that same serene look on my face that radiated innocence, the same look I’d worn every time I’d seen her.

She blinked and I couldn’t help it, my smile got a little wider. I was just so relieved and happy to see her again that the muscles in my face worked without my conscious thought. At then they got stuck that way, curse my stupid quantum-locking.

And her reaction was not quite immediate. She looked puzzled at first, frowning and then edging away. She glanced up the path for a moment and I forced my face to relax back to its normal expression. 

That just startled her, and I realized I shouldn’t have done it. Oops.

She took a step back with those big wide eyes, then started walking away hastily. Again, I couldn’t help it. I took a step and reached after her and then froze when she looked back at the noise. 

Her feet stopped but her eyes got wider. At least my expression was not an angry scary Angel one this time. She looked frightened, but she didn’t run away and that was something. She stepped back towards me and stared from a few feet away.

Then she touched my hand. It was very tentative, very uncertain, but a very intentional touch. She tapped one of my outstretched fingers, as if testing it. Of course it was stone, it would always be stone if she was looking at me.

“Okay…” She breathed, and it was the first time I’d ever really heard her voice. “How are you doing this?”

I wished, oh how dearly did I wish that I could move, that I could speak to her then. Angels don’t have voices, not ones that can be understood by humans anyway. 

She laughed then, a dry tired sound. “I’m crazy! That’s it! I’m just completely insane. You’re a statue that moves, and that’s completely ridiculous.” Her hand touched me again, more firmly that time. “But look at you! You’re a rock. You can’t move. I’m just insane.”

There was a merciful few seconds of quiet as she closed her eyes and shook her head with a laugh and I did what I thought was stupid and what was best. I kneeled down, and in the sandy surface of the path I dragged my finger and wrote only two words.

I was halfway through the last letter when I froze and I heard her shocked breath. I only hoped she didn’t run. At my feet was my message, and I waited for her response.

_Not crazy._ It said in the dirt in block letters, my finger still trying to carve out the ‘Y’ at the end of _crazy._

__

__

“Holy shit.” I would have laughed if I could. “Holy shit!” She was shaking, I could tell. “You can move. You can move!”

And she grabbed my arm, the one resting on my knee as I knelt. She pulled, clearly expecting me to move but I didn’t, couldn’t. That only seemed to puzzle her and she pulled harder. She couldn’t move me, not in this position and not when I was ten times her weight.

“Wha—? But how…?” There was nothing I could do until she gave me a moment’s reprieve. Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long. 

She put her hands on her face and turned around, clearly overwhelmed and confused. And when she turned back to face me I’d scrubbed out my first message and written two new words.

_Don’t look._

“Don’t look…” She echoed, once she’d gotten past another breath of alarm. “Don’t look? Don’t look at what? Don’t look at you?” And then she got it, her eyes widening again and her mouth dropping open for a moment. “Okay!”

She covered her eyes with her hands and spun to face the other way. I smiled at her back and moved. I knew she could hear me as I scribbled more in the dirt based on the way her head twitched and turned slightly, but her eyes were covered and that was all that mattered.

I finished a new message in the dirt and rose to my feet. There were a few seconds of silence as I waited, and she seemed to take the hint. When she turned I was standing patiently, my hands clasped in front of me and my face pleasant. 

_I move when I am not seen._

“Oh. But…how?” She shook her head. “Wait, never mind. Bigger question: what are you?” And she stared at me for a few seconds until she remembered I couldn’t answer, then hastily covered her eyes.

_Alien._

It was a much faster way of explaining things than trying to describe a Weeping Angel in dirt, of all things.

“Alien. Alien! You’re an alien statue that moves! That moves when you’re not seen.” When she blinked I formed my hand into a fist, with my thumb raised upward. I had seen the gesture used in many movies to convey acknowledgement or confirmation. “Woah, that was fast.” She said, referring to my rapid movement in the time it took her to blink. “So…can you talk? If I close my eyes can you talk to me?” 

It was an excellent question, but I already knew the answer. When she blinked I twisted my hand so the thumb pointed down to signal the negative.

“Oh.” She was disappointed. “But you can write things.” She said thoughtfully. “I have so many questions, you have no idea. I can go get some paper. Can you write on paper?” Again I gave her the thumbs up. Truthfully I had never tried writing on paper. I had never tried communicating with a human before! This was a novel experience and I didn’t know what to expect.

“Okay, I’m going to leave and get some paper. I won’t be long. Will you be here when I get back?” I had never spoken with anyone who wasn’t an Angel before, and since I’d left London I had been lonely. Had any of my kind ever spoken to another being before? Would I be the first? How could I say no?

She squeezed her eyes shut for several seconds and when she opened them again I had both hands in fists with their thumbs pointing up. It seemed like the simplest way to communicate, even if I did feel a little funny doing it.

She smiled widely and nodded. “I’ll be, like, twenty minutes.” And then she took off down the path, doing that running thing again.

With a foot I scrubbed out the letters I’d written in the dirt, smiling to myself. I was feeling better than I had in years. Until recently the high point in my life had been discovering movie theatres, but now it would seem that I maybe I had someone to talk to. What did humans call them? Fiends? Yes, I had a fiend. 

Wait.

Friend.

###### 

A silly thing that popped into my head one night. I'm picturing all the seemingly mundane things these two could do together, and the Angel would be just tickled to do them all.


End file.
